Campus Chatter – August 21, 2013

Pueblo Indians captured Santa Fe during the Pueblo Revolt, today (1680). Also, James Cook claimed Australia for Britain, naming it New South Wales (1770), Gustav III announced a new constitution that ended 50 years of parliamentary rule in Sweden and made him an absolute monarch (1772), the crew of the Eliza Frances discovered Jarvis Island (1821), Nat Turner’s led a short-lived slave rebellion (1831), a Confederate guerrilla force known as Quantrill’s Raiders destroyed Lawrence, Kansas (1863), witnesses reported the apparitions of Mary, Joseph, and St. John the Baptist at Ireland’s Knock Shrine (1879), 37 people were killed as an F5 tornado struck Rochester, Minnesota, a tragedy that led to the founding of the Mayo Clinic (1883), William Burroughs patented the U.S.’s first successful adding machine (1888), Ransom Olds founded the plant that began making Oldsmobiles (1897), an employee at the Louvre stole the Mona Lisa (1911), the Dumbarton Oaks Conference began meetings to organize the United Nations (1944), Harry Daghlian was fatally irradiated during a criticality accident with the Demon Core at Los Alamos (1945), the Soviet Union tested the first intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7 Semyorka (1957), Hawaii became our 50th state (1959), Motown released its first #1 hit, the Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman” (1961), James Anderson, Jr. posthumously became the first black U.S. Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor (1968), Alexander Godunov defected to the U.S. (1979), Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino was assassinated at the Manila airport that now bears his name (1983), 1800 people died when CO2 gas bubbled up from Cameroon’s volcanic Lake Nyon (1986), Latvia declared independence, on the same day the August Coup to depose Mikhail Gorbachev and restore the Soviet Union collapsed (1991), U.S. Marshal Service agents attempting to arrest Randy Weaver on weapons charges began the deadly standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho (1992), and NASA lost contact with the Mars Observer (1993). And NATO deployed peacekeeping troops to Macedonia, on the same day the International Red Cross requested famine relief for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (2001).

Japan’s nuclear crisis escalated to its worst level in two years on Wednesday, with its nuclear watchdog saying it feared more tanks were leaking contaminated water and China expressing its shock over the disaster.

Japan’s nuclear regulator also said it feared the disaster exceeded the ability of the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, to cope “in some respects”.

A spokesman for the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said earlier on Wednesday the agency plans to upgrade the severity of the crisis from a level 1 “anomaly” to a level three “serious incident” on an international scale for radiological releases.

Could get worse, too.

glendaw271
on August 21, 2013 at 7:37 am

And yet, we are hearing very little about this from regular media sources. As Gardener said last night in Our Earth, this is the kind of thing that should be shouted from the rooftops, but people don’t want to face the idea that we have a technology that could cause a much larger problem than we have the ability to handle. What is this going to do to the waters in our oceans?

winterbanyan
on August 21, 2013 at 8:01 am

You hit the nail on the head, Glenda. People don’t want to face it. Fukushima hit the news on August 7 with these leaks. We even covered it in Noontime News. Then crickets.

It’s not that the news won’t tell us, it’s apparently that we don’t want to hear it. Maybe we just feel helpless.

“Strontium can be retained in fish bones — and our bones if we eat the fish — for a longer period of time and so that becomes a different health hazard of concern.”

Data on the concentration of isotopes in the water leaking from the storage tanks in unavailable. Time and further monitoring will help illustrate the threat to the marine environment and human health, he said.

For now, “the levels (of radioactive material) have not been high enough to cause direct mutations or mortality,” Buesseler said, but added that the radioisotopes do accumulate and “if we consume seafood that is grown in these contaminated waters, then there is a slight increase in cancer risk.”

“Strontium can be retained in fish bones — and our bones if we eat the fish — for a longer period of time and so that becomes a different health hazard of concern.”

winterbanyan
on August 21, 2013 at 8:35 am

Surely you remember, Jim, when we got weekly reports on the strontium-90 levels in milk from nuclear testing? I also remember that we kept drinking milk.

Seems like another time now. How much you wanna bet we don’t get a weekly report on the strontium levels in fish on the evening news?

Jim W
on August 21, 2013 at 8:53 am

I also remember that there were reports of 1 to 3 % increases in birth problems for women who lived in the plume areas east of nuclear testing. There were similar reports for those east of three Mile Island.

NCrissieB
on August 21, 2013 at 8:13 am

Thank you for sharing that, Mike. Alas, problems don’t go away just because the media stop reporting on them … and this is a problem that millions of people will be dealing with for a long, long time.

Good morning! ::hugggggs::

Gardener
on August 21, 2013 at 7:21 am

OK, anyone who catches “Please Mr. Postman” as an earworm today will know how that happened…. 🙂

winterbanyan
on August 21, 2013 at 8:01 am

That is kinda sticking around, G. 😆

NCrissieB
on August 21, 2013 at 8:14 am

I read somewhere that the best way to cure an earworm is to actually listen to the song. Just in case that works….

Good morning! ::hugggggs::

LI Mike
on August 21, 2013 at 8:24 am

Be my, be my little baby, my one and only baby. Now that’s a song. Foregt the Postman jingle.

Gardener
on August 21, 2013 at 9:02 am

Yup!

“For every kiss you give me, I’ll give you three!”

NCrissieB
on August 21, 2013 at 8:25 am

And of course the early-60s too-much-treble sound makes me want similar harmonics with a more balanced choral and orchestral sound, courtesy of Little Shop of Horrors:

Good morning! ::hugggggs::

winterbanyan
on August 21, 2013 at 8:26 am

I’m avoiding that….

Gardener
on August 21, 2013 at 7:30 am

Good morning!

We have a clear sky and 68 degrees. Worked on the raised bed a bit yesterday AM. Needed more cauliflower to set out, and had an errand for the food pantry, so invited PW out to lunch. We had an enjoyable meal @ a Mexican place, ran the errand, bought the plants, and returned home…

Kenny came over after work, and we finished filling the raised bed with the topsoil mix I’d made. This morning will get busy and plant lettuce, radishes, spinach, and onions out there. Better soak some beet seed too…. 🙂 Happy day, it’s been a lot of work. Photo when we can…

Yes, there was reliable reporting that last night’s Our Earth will be on this semester’s final. Of course, that assumes the resident faculty get around to writing the final. They usually forget…. 😉

Good morning! ::hugggggs::

glendaw271
on August 21, 2013 at 7:31 am

Good morning!

I wanted to say something snarky about Hawaii not possibly being a state until after 1962, but I just couldn’t muster enough snark to get it to sound crazy enough. And I think that I may have read the absolutely craziest thing about Ted Cruz over at GOS last night. It just goes to show that both sides do have their crazies, as there are quite a few there that seem to want to go beyond the point of just letting him renounce his Canadian citizenship and let all be well. They seem to want proof that his mother filled out the correct paperwork at the embassy and proof that he has no naturalization papers. One brave person tried to talk reason, but they attacked that poster. I really don’t like it when I see that same behavior coming from a site that I feel is supposed to represent my views. Obviously, they didn’t with that one.

I’ve been dealing with birthers for the past 5 years now, and the mentality is … remarkable. No matter what proof you run out or legal precedents, they’ll move the goalposts somewhere else. If it’s any comfort, there are a lot on the right also in the “Cruz is not a natural born citizen” camp. 🙄

The funny thing is that Cruz is bringing up something that was being discussed a lot on the anti-birther boards several years ago, before he ever ran for Senator or became nationally known. McCain (whose eligibility was challenged) was born to two US citizens on US territory, Obama was born to a citizen mother on US soil. It’s been “settled law” for well over a century that those instances mean “natural born citizen.” The thing in the law prior to IIRC, 1964, was that “citizen mother and born overseas does not equal NBC,” or automatic citizenship. There was a lot of blue-sky debating back and forth over that back then.

My own opinion is that he’s eligible, but I am enjoying watching the prominent Obama birthers twisting themselves into knots over Cruz. 😉

LI Mike
on August 21, 2013 at 8:26 am

I hope he’s eligible and that he wins the Republican nomination. 😀

Gardener
on August 21, 2013 at 9:05 am

YES!

winterbanyan
on August 21, 2013 at 8:15 am

I think some of this is petty revenge, really. It did get awfully tiresome hearing about Obama’s birth certificate. I’m not going to join the chorus, but I must admit wondering how the original birthers are going to twist themselves into knots about a Canadian birth certificate. Although they probably won’t. Cruz is the right color, which was what it was all about, wasn’t it?

NCrissieB
on August 21, 2013 at 8:19 am

The birthers are twisting themselves into knots again, although I suspect they’ll untangle those knots very quickly if Sen. Cruz becomes the GOP’s nominee in 2016. As Norbrook noted, they had no problem with Sen. McCain having been born in the Panama Canal zone. Of course, Sens. McCain and Cruz have much less melanin than does President Obama…. 🙄